It is true when tickets sit for a while they become difficult to scratch but I tell the retailers to sell them to me because I use a razor blade to scratch the ticket. I think that if there is a winner at some point yes they are going to have to admit it because otherwise people will ask where is it. That is a good question and I am not sure we will get a good answer that will make us happy. I did ask and their answer to me was that they could not know if the ticket is in that pack of destroyed cards but I did not believe that at all.
But I will say that when my scratch off cards were robbed and we gave them the numbers of the scratch off tickets that were stolen and yes I actually was able to get the numbers of the cards stolen, the investigator at lotto did in fact let me know everything I needed to know including how many were winners how many were not etc etc./
My experiences have been pretty good with lotto but I agree there is this thing about the destroyed books that we may never know the right answers about.